Building on a dream

Evenley Wood Garden, Northamptonshire When Nicola Taylor took on her plantsman father's flower-filled woodland, she knew more about horses than trees, but, as Tiffany Daneff discovers, that hasn't stopped her from making a great success of the garden

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Imagine if you combined the beauty of an old English wood, with its mixture of broad trees and skinny saplings, sudden clearings and dappled glades, with a garden where specimen trees, flowering shrubs and bulbous plants have been planted to give pleasure at different times of the year and you will have something of the hybrid that is Evenley Wood Garden near Brackley in Northamptonshire.

The 60-acre wood first came to the notice of a keen local plantsman, Timothy Whiteley, when he was out hunting in the late 1970s. The Rhododendron ponticum that was growing beside the rides indicated a seam of acid soil running through the typically alkaline Northamptonshire clay. With such variation in soil, the woodland—which was only 700 yards from Whiteley’s home—would enable him to plant a wide variety of trees and shrubs so, when, in 1980, the chance finally arose, he bought the 60 acres of beech, oak and ash for £10,000. Thus began a lifetime of collecting, growing and breeding. He brought back treasures from his travels and other specialist plants were frequently given to him by horticulturists who knew that he would ensure them a good home.

Timmy Whiteley, as he was known to family and friends, is fondly remembered as a charming and enthusiastic plantsman who loved to show visitors around his wood. It is extraordinary how much energy he had for his horticultural pursuits. These included oaks, magnolias, maples and euonymus (to mention only a few of the trees and shrubs by which he was fascinated), as well as bulbous plants, notably snowdrops and lilies. He added a stream of blue scilla and drifts of martagon lilies, as well as stands of the giant Himalayan lily Cardiocrinum giganteum.

Erythroniums, trilliums and arum lilies also did well—with some, if not all, still being visible today. He made careful notes of their progress, or otherwise: the pretty little yellow native tulip,